Bullet Business

The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has disallowed two television advertisements for 888’s online bingo site 888ladies.com.

One of the ads, a 10-second one, showed a woman alone in her bedroom screaming “I won” and jumping up and down in excitement. The other one showed a street and a woman was heard screaming “Ahhhhhh! I won!”. Inside the house the woman was shown in her bedroom screaming and jumping up and down with excitement. The voice-over said, “When you win a golden ticket at 888 ladies bingo, you're so close to the millions, you can start practising”. The woman looked in the mirror, sighed and fell silent before screaming and celebrating again.

It was highlighted that the ad was misleading because it exaggerated the likely amount of the winnings.

The ASA noted £5 million was available to be won by one 888ladies.com golden ticket holder if they were able to match the 24 numbers on their card with the first 24 balls drawn in the game.

The company, Cassava Enterprises clarified that the ads did not make any claims about a guaranteed maximum cash prize but concentrated on the games golden ticket entry mechanism. It was argued that the ad related to the free entry to the game through this ticket allocation and not to an amount that was guaranteed to be won in the final game. Cassava believed the language used in the ads was familiar to the average consumer in relation to prize promotions and that the use of the “£xm game” statement would be understood to be a reference to be the total prize pool that was available to players and not a fixed amount that would definitely be awarded to the winner.  It was also argued the ads made it clear through on-screen text that terms and conditions applied to the game and said  the structure of the game and how the top prize would be awarded was clearly detailed on the website.   

For its part, the ASA noted that, although ads for other cash games such as the National Lottery detailed jackpot amounts that were statistically unlikely to be won by any one individual, the prize structure differed from the £5-million game detailed in Cassavas ad because, however it was awarded, the full original lottery prize fund was allocated to one or many ticket holders or would be rolled over in full to the following weeks game.

“We noted in comparison that the prize fund in the £5-million game dropped as the game went on,” said the ASA. “We considered that the fact the prize fund operated on a downward sliding scale was a significant condition attached to the golden ticket game and noted the opportunity to win a golden ticket to enter the “massive £5 million game” was cited as an incentive for viewers to play bingo in both ads. We concluded that the omission of this information from the ads was likely to exaggerate the value of the cash prize actually awarded to the winning ticket holder in the golden ticket game.”

Therefore, it was decided that the ads were likely to mislead.